


Azula Alone

by Druddigonite



Series: Azula Week 2019 [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula Week, Azula Week 2019, Azula travelling across the Earth Kingdom, Delusional narrative, Gen, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 10:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19827922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Druddigonite/pseuds/Druddigonite
Summary: Day Two Prompt: Post Canon AzulaHow do you live in a world that doesn’t want you?





	Azula Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Zuko Alone is my favorite episode in Avatar, not only because of the worldbuilding and poignancy of the plot, but also how much it humbled him. When Aaron mentioned planning an Azula redemption, the first thing I thought of was her trekking through the Earth Kingdom and learning so much along the way. 
> 
> This ended up being much, much more convoluted and longer than I thought, and will probably finish to be my longest work by far. So take this little taste of madness as a promise of more to come.

**. Azula Alone .**  
.  
.

She’s halfway around the world before he catches up to her.

“Azula.” Ozai has not aged a bit, his voice still smooth as silk, smoldering like coals. He’s somehow gotten into her rundown little shack of a home despite barred doors, royal regalia striking against the dust and cobwebs. Azula ignores him and continues on preparing her dinner. 

“You are the rightful heir of the throne.” The people of the nameless Earth Kingdom village she stayed at are nice, too nice, and accept her Fire Nation coin in exchange for their wares. She had procured a bushel of beet-carrots from the farmer down the street, as well as a mud trout from the fishmonger’s wife, which are added to the wild marsh-leeks and shiitake mushrooms she foraged earlier this morning, the latter of which she’s learned to identify through years of stomach-churning trial and error. She’s chopping them with her dagger—the only weapon she has on hand—keeping careful mind to avoid clipping her fingers. 

“Your brother is a weakling. He was never meant for the throne.” Her supplies are dwindling; all the valuables she had fled with have been traded away for food and shelter, and soon she would be left with neither. She needs to find a way to make a living, and soon. Not in this town, though; even from a cursory glance she can tell their businesses are drying out like a pond in a drought. It’s a wonder no one’s recognized her for this long. 

“I love you, Azula.” Ozai’s breath ghosts heated down her neck and she screams, flings the dagger like a kunai at his chest. It lodges in the far wall with a dull thud, and an eternity passes before she can breathe again. 

He’s catching up with her, she realises through snatches of air. She’s always assumed he’d stay at the palace, locked down in the dungeons and only occasionally manifesting by her side in the crimson halls, but she’s a refugee in the hinterlands of the Earth Kingdom yet he’s following, he’s _here_. 

A faint trickle of warmth exudes from her fingertips from where she accidentally chopped her skin. It is the same color of Ozai’s robes, and for a moment she cannot tell them apart. 

“No you don’t,” Azula whispers, "I am more than what you make of me, father." A mantra. A plea.

The empty house does not respond. 

She’s out by sundown, carrots and fish and marsh-leek left rotting on a bloodstained table.  


.  
.

It’s been years, and the ghost tug of chains still burn across her wrist. Her head’s lighter without her headpiece and her duties to weight it down; it adds to the feeling of surrealness as she walks these hinterland roads. When Azula closes her eyes her hollow husk of a former self is floating, like a ghost. 

The old Azula is a construct of war. She cannot survive in peace. 

The first village, she rents an inn. The food is simply chunks of meat floating in gruel, along with a mug of ale. She eats the gruel without protest but forgoes the beer; alcohol lowers inhibitions, lowers control, and the last thing Azula wants was her control of herself taken away. More that it already has, at least. She stays for the night, sleeps on a mattress of stale straw. It’s degrading, it’s foreign, and it wards her demons away. 

In her dreams, the Avatar sits meditating over a single candle. It’s small but it burns bright, too bright, a wildfire on a wick that devours the wax until it’s nothing but a stump, fading fast. The Avatar opens his eyes and his arrows glow blindingly white. A verdict has been reached. Slowly he extends his hands—one pressing into hot wax, the other poised near the flame—and snuffs it out. 

Azula wakes in cold sweat. She’s out and on the road again before her hands stop shaking

The second village she walks into in broad daylight. Azula feels incredibly self-aware of her crimson robes and pale skin as she walks into a shop and asks storekeeper for some generic men’s clothing. She’s an old woman in her twilight years, but her hands are strong and grip firmly onto Azula as she takes her measurements. She catches the indentation of a ring on the woman’s ring finger and wonders the story behind that. 

She is handed her clothing and rations quick, and changes in the shrubbery nearby. When she walks out she sees a man and his daughter playing in the dirt roads. The daughter is dressed in dusty rags with a mouth full of crooked teeth, but she’s riding on her father’s shoulders and laughs like heaven. 

The third village is a ghost town, and she’s near breaking enough to try the old liquor bottles in the tavern. When she comes to her senses again, all the glasses are shattered on the floor and there is wetness stinging in her eyes. She’s standing in a puddle of crimson and it reminds her of the royal halls, all too familiar. 

She hates it. 

Hates how it makes her feel, bound in chains and ice, a child again, maybe, sitting at the foot of Azulon’s throne. Except there is no fire and Ozai is perched on it instead, voice dripping venom onto her head, and he says: “Your mother is dead.” 

Ursa was too brave to love him. 

The fourth village, her father is waiting for her.


End file.
